INLAND COURTS: Cuts, closures mean inconveniences

Reeling from state budget cuts and drainage of rainy-day funds, Inland county courts have been closed, staff and services have been trimmed, and the number of retired judges used to ease caseloads has been reduced.

Some of the completed or planned courtroom closures have taken place in remote areas of the 20,000-square-mile San Bernardino County, meaning residents will have to travel long distances if they want to dispute their traffic ticket or small-claims case.

The courts that stay open — San Bernardino, Fontana, Rancho Cucamonga, Victorville and Joshua Tree — will end up more crowded. Residents who use those facilities already face reduced court clerk hours and other services. Additionally, the convenient night courts for traffic ticket hearings are scheduled to cease in March.

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The court in Needles is one of three ordered to close May 6. Population about 4,800, the town is on the Colorado River border with Arizona.

“We have no transportation, no buses, a lot of senior citizens without cars,” said Susan Alexis, co-owner of The Wagon Wheel Restaurant.

The nearest open, full-time courthouse by then will be in Victorville, 175 road miles or about 21/2 hours of driving — each way — from Needles.

“What are people going to do who don’t have transportation? That is the No. 1 question. … We don’t even have a taxicab that is based in Needles,” Alexis said in a phone interview Friday, Jan. 4.

It would be slightly less trouble if Needles residents could go to the Barstow court, a drive of 145 miles each way. But that also is scheduled to close in May. The Joshua Tree court is 147 miles away, but services there will be curtailed Feb. 4.

The other planned May closure is the court in Big Bear. Already closed are courts in Redlands, Twin Peaks and Chino.

“There will probably be fewer courthouses open than since the inception of the county,” Presiding Judge Marsha G. Slough said in a phone interview.

‘DISHEARTENING’

The judge said she had recently sworn in two newly appointed judges who were replacing retired jurists.

“Part of the oath is asking them to uphold the constitution of the United States and the constitution of the state of California, and part of what that means is you have a courtroom to go and argue disputes,” Slough said. “It was disheartening,” she said, to administer the oaths when in previous days she had issued orders closing courts.

The most recent court closures and accompanying reduction of 44 staffers are expected to save $5.3 million a year. Even so, San Bernardino County Court Executive Officer Stephen H. Nash said he was forecasting a $7 million shortfall for the system during the next fiscal year. That may cause additional cuts, he said.

In Riverside County, officials last summer closed courtrooms in Corona and Palm Springs. Sherri Carter, the court executive officer in Riverside County, said she did not anticipate any additional closures for the rest of this fiscal year, which runs through June.

The court also has severely cut its use of retired judges to handle its caseload. Five years ago it used 21 to 22 assigned judges daily; now the number is six.

While all the state’s court systems have been hit by budget cuts in recent years, Inland courts were in trouble before the recession took hold.

San Bernardino and Riverside counties are first and second, respectively, for deficits of judgeships in the state. No new judgeships were added as the counties’ populations grew during the past decade. Dozens more would be needed to effectively handle the current volume of cases, an October study found.

RESERVES DRAINED

Riverside and San Bernardino County courts each built up reserves in anticipation of hard times during the recession.

But the budget plan for the current fiscal year called on the courts that had reserves to put a share of that money into a general fund for courts statewide. There were objections — not every system had reserves, but all 58 counties were going to benefit from the ones that did.

Nash, the court executive officer for San Bernardino County, said his system had reserves of $37 million last fiscal year; it was down to $32 million by July 1. He anticipates it will be at $9 million by June 30, and that may quickly be depleted after contributions to the statewide fund for next year’s budget and the court’s own use of the reserves.

“We are speeding downhill,” Nash said. “We will not have an effective reserve.”

Riverside County started the current fiscal year with a reserve of $17 million. Then it got hit three times, Carter said: $7.6 million that the Legislature mandated to be put into the statewide court general fund; a general fund reduction of $6.2 million, and another $1.1 million into a statewide reserve administered by the California Judicial Council.

“It’s gone,” Carter said. “We had planned for this to get us through these tough years.”

There is anticipation that when Gov. Jerry Brown announces his budget outline Thursday, Jan. 10, he will call for up to $200 million more to be contributed from the courts’ reserve systems, Nash and Carter said. That would wipe out reserves and cut into the base contributions each court gets from the state to make it up.

FUNDING WOES

The state’s contribution to both counties’ court systems already dropped considerably for this year’s budgets.

Riverside County received $59.3 million, which was $12.5 million less than the previous year’s allotment. That could still be reduced by another $2.4 million for this fiscal year, Carter said. The court’s total budget from all sources is $82.3 million, with about 1,100 staffers, around 150 fewer than three years ago.

San Bernardino County received $73.5 million from the state in the current budget, which was $35.3 million less than the previous year. The court has a current year budget of $103.5 million, with about 950 employees after the most recent layoffs. A couple of years ago the court had about 1,100 workers, Nash said

Nash said there was one bright spot: A Trial Court Funding Work Group, with members appointed by both Gov. Brown and Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye, is reviewing how courts are funded annually. Nash said the methodology has not changed since the state Legislature began funding in courts in fiscal year 1997-98. That was based on what counties had funded their court systems previously.

“They have been using the same percentages, year after year, even though the workload and the populations have shifted,” said Nash, pointing out the huge population and caseload increases in the Inland area. “Each year the disparate funding was getting worse.

“We just think it’s a very positive development,” he said of the work group.